6 Ways to Fix Regular Hogwarts Legacy Crashing on a Windows PC

Many players have reported that Hogwarts Legacy keeps on crashing with regularity on their Windows PCs when playing it. For example, this is what one HL player said on Reddit: “Unfortunately, Hogwarts Legacy keeps crashing randomly as I’m playing. After doing some research, it seems this issue is endemic to the game itself, not my setup.” Persistent random crashing can make the game unplayable. These are some ways you can fix regular Hogwarts Legacy crashing on Windows 11/10 PCs.

Read also: 7 Windows 11/10 Gaming PC Optimization Tips for Better Gaming

Reduce Graphical Settings

First, try lowering the in-game graphical settings for Hogwarts Legacy. Hogwarts Legacy has a Global Quality Preset setting you can change to generally lower the graphical quality, which usually enhances gameplay performance. This is how you can reduce graphical settings in Hogwarts Legacy.

1. Start the Hogwarts Legacy game.
2. Bring up the Settings menu.
3. Select the Graphics Options tab.
4. Next, select a lower Graphical Quality Preset setting. For example, select Medium if that option is set to High.
   
   

   The Global Quality Preset option

5. Select the Display Options tab.
6. Turn off the Film Grain, Depth of Field, Motion Blur, VSync, and Chrome Aberration settings.
   
   

   The Display Options tab

7. Select Apply Settings to save and restart Hogwarts Legacy.

Repair the Hogwarts Legacy Game Files

Games often crash when some of their files are corrupted or missing. For that reason, Steam and Epic Games Launcher include Verify options for repairing games’ files. So, try verifying the Hogwarts Legacy game files as covered on these Steam help or Epic support pages.

The Verify button in Epic Games

Disable Ray Tracing

Some players confirm disabling Ray Tracing fixed persistent Hogwarts Legacy crashing on their PCs. This solution will more likely be effective on PCs that aren’t well optimized for it. You can disable Ray Tracing like this.

1. Activate Run (use the Windows logo + R hotkey), input %localappdata%, and click OK.
2. Open the Hogwarts Legacy > Saved > Config > WindowsNoEditor folder from the Local directory.
   
   

   The GameUserSettings file

3. Right-click on the GameUserSettings file to select Notepad.
4. Set these Ray Tracing options in the text file to false as follows:
   bEnableRaytracingShadows=False
   bEnableRaytracingReflections=False
   bEnableRaytracingAO=False
   
   
   

   The Ray Tracing settings

5. Press Ctrl + S to save the changed settings.
6. Close the GameUserSettings file.

You can also change Ray Tracing options with Hogwarts Legacy. To do so, click the Graphics Options tab and set the Ray Tracing Shadows, Ray Tracing Ambient Occlusion, and Ray Tracing Reflections to off. Select Apply Settings to save your options.

Set an Unlimited Shader Cache Size

If you have an NVIDIA graphics card, try setting an unlimited shader cache. Gaming performance issues can arise when that shader cache size is restricted to a more specific value. This is how you can set an unlimited shader cache via the NVIDIA Control Panel.

1. Right-click any empty part of the Windows 11/10 desktop area to select NVIDIA Control Panel.
2. Click on the Manage 3D Settings navigation tab.
3. Next, click the drop-down menu for the Shader Cache Size setting on the Global Settings tab.
   
   

   The Shader Cache size setting

4. Select the Unlimited option.
5. Click Apply to set the new shader cache size.

Extend Virtual Memory

Many HL players confirm extending virtual memory allocation can fix persistent Hogwarts Legacy crashing on Windows 11/10 PCs. Increasing virtual memory expands the space set aside for RAM overflow. You can extend virtual memory on a Windows 11/10 PC as follows.

1. Click inside the taskbar search box or press the button with the magnifying glass icon.
2. Input View advanced system settings and select the matching search result.
3. Click Settings to open the Performance Options window.
4. Next, click the Advanced tab and Change.
   
   

   The Change button in Performance Options

5. Deselect Automatically manage paging file size for all drives to uncheck that setting’s checkbox.
6. Click on the Custom size option to activate the value boxes.
7. Enter 8192 into the Maximum size and Initial size value boxes if your PC’s RAM specification is eight gigabytes. If your PC has 16 gigabytes of RAM, input 16384 into those value boxes.
   
   

   The Virtual Memory window

8. Press Set to apply.
9. Click OK on the windows.

Clean Boot Your Windows PC

Finally, try optimizing system resources for Hogwarts Legacy by clean-booting Windows. Performing a clean boot disables superfluous background third-party apps and services from automatically starting with Windows. This clean-boot page on Microsoft’s website tells you how users can disable third-party programs and services with MSConfig and Task Manager.

The Services tab in MSConfig

Other Potential Ways to Fix Hogwarts Legacy Crashing

There are many possible causes for Hogwarts Legacy crashing, meaning there are even more potential solutions. These are some additional troubleshooting methods that could also feasibly fix or reduce regular Hogwarts Legacy crashing:

• Update the graphics card driver on your PC.
• Reinstall your Hogwarts Legacy game.
• Select the high-performance graphics option for Hogwarts Legacy via the Settings app.
• Undo graphics card overclocking if you’ve overclocked your PC’s GPU.
• Turn on the Game Mode feature in Windows.

There aren’t any guaranteed ways to fix Hogwarts Legacy crashing on Windows PCs. However, players confirm the potential solutions in this guide have fixed, or at least reduced, that game’s crashing on their PCs. So, applying one or more of those potential resolutions could stop Hogwarts Legacy crashing on your desktop or laptop.